On 6/14/2016 12:32 PM, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
The input to encoding would have to remain bytes (that's the main purpose of base64... to turn bytes into an ascii string).
The purpose is to turn arbitrary binary data (commonly images) into 'safe bytes' that will not get mangled on transmission (7 bit channels were once common) and that will not mangle a display of data transmitted or received. Ignoring the EBCDIC world, which Python mostly does, the set of 'safe bytes' is the set that encodes printable ascii characters. Those bytes pass through 7 bit channels and display on ascii-based terminals.
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